Polar Shift Read online

  “About that schedule?” Austin said.

  Barrett’s eyes blazed with anger. “We’ll be ready,” he said.

  Leaving Barrett to his work, Austin and the others climbed back down the plane’s gangway. Austin asked where he could pitch in. Zavala ticked off a short list of last-minute supplies. Austin walked away from the activity where it was quieter and made his phone calls. In every instance, he was told that the material would be delivered quickly. He was walking back to the plane when he saw that Karla had followed him. She had evidently been watching as he made the calls.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” she said. “I want to go on the plane.”

  “This is the part where the hero says, ‘It could be dangerous,’” Austin said.

  “I know. But it was also dangerous back on Ivory Island.”

  Austin hesitated.

  “Besides,” Karla said. “What could be more risky than riding with you in a Stanley Steamer?”

  Austin would have to tie Karla up to keep her from boarding the plane. He smiled and said, “Neither of us is going anywhere unless we get back to work.”

  She threw her arms around him and planted a warm kiss on his lips. Austin vowed to devote more time to pleasure after this job was done.

  As they made their way back to the plane, a car pulled up. A tall figure got out from behind the steering wheel and limped toward them. It was Schroeder.

  “What are you doing here?” Karla said.

  “I’m more curious about how you got past the gate,” Austin said.

  “The usual formula. A combination of bravado and false identification.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting in a hospital bed,” Karla scolded.

  “A hospital is not the same as a prison,” Schroeder said. “They let you go if you sign a paper. Do you think I could stay in bed knowing you were doing this?” He gazed with wonderment at the plane under its bright lights. “Ingenious. Do you really think you can neutralize the reversal from the air?”

  “We’re going to try,” Karla said.

  “We? You’re not going on this mission? It might be dangerous.”

  “You sound like Kurt. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. My family is responsible for this mess. It’s my responsibility to help clean it up.”

  Schroeder laughed. “You’re Lazlo’s granddaughter, without doubt. Stubborn, just like him.” He turned to Austin. “Take good care of her.”

  “I promise,” Austin said.

  Schroeder glanced at the bustling activity in and around the plane. “When do you expect to leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Austin said.

  “This is one old dinosaur who knows when he’s extinct,” Schroeder said. “I’ll be at the hospital waiting for your call. Good luck.” He embraced Karla, shook hands with Austin and hobbled back to his car. They watched the car’s taillights until they were out of sight, then Austin turned to Karla.

  “We’ve got lots of work to do.”

  She nodded. Walking arm in arm, they made their way toward the huge aircraft.

  WHILE AUSTIN’S NUMA crew was in a frantic race to achieve the impossible, Tris Margrave was having no doubts about the imminent success of his project. Doubt was something foreign to him, and would never have entered his mind.

  As the Polar Adventure plowed through the South Atlantic, he sat in his comfortable ergonomic chair behind a control panel built into the forward observation platform. His long fingers played over the controls like an organist in a great cathedral. He had started the dynamos as soon as the ship left port. Each generator was represented on the large computer monitor by a red symbol and number, which meant that it was active at a low level.

  Red lines ran from the dynamos to the image of a cone. The cone was green except for its red point, indicating that a minimum amount of power was flowing into the huge coil lodged deep in the ship’s hold. Margrave thought of it as the equivalent of idling a car motor.

  On another screen, the console displayed a cutaway diagram of the earth that showed its layers. Special sensors in the ship’s hull would be able to detect the electromagnetic penetration and the extent of ripple effect.

  Gant had been on a tour of the ship talking with his security people. Ever the perfectionist, Gant wanted to be sure that when Margrave had outlived his usefulness he would be quickly disposed of. As he entered the observation platform, Gant smiled and said, “Not much longer?”

  Margrave glanced at his GPS. “We’ll be on target in the morning. It will take another hour to position the ship and deploy the coil. The sea is calm, so it might not be that long.”

  Gant went over to the bar and poured two tall flutes of champagne. He gave one glass to Margrave.

  “A toast would be appropriate.”

  “Here’s to the defeat of the Elites,” Margrave said. “To a new world.”

  Gant raised his glass. “And new world order.”

  41

  ZAVALA LEFT THE 747’s cockpit and made his way back to the plane’s abbreviated passenger section where Austin was working on a laptop computer. Zavala was smiling as if he had heard a joke.

  “Pilots are funny people,” Zavala said with a shake of his head. “The cockpit crew would be pleased if you could tell them where to fly the plane.”

  “I’ll have a definite position soon,” Austin said. “For now, you can tell them to head in the general direction of the mid–South Atlantic.”

  “That narrows it down,” Zavala said.

  “This is the area we’re looking at.” Austin pointed to the glowing computer screen. “That’s a NASA diagram showing data collected by the ROSAT spacecraft. That blob you see extending from Brazil to South Africa is our hunting ground, the South Atlantic Anomaly.” He tapped the keyboard and zoomed in on a cluster of rectangles. “This area has the most pronounced dip in the magnetosphere.”

  “Which means it would be the logical point to start a polar shift,” Zavala said.

  “Yes and no. Here’s where I think we should go.” He tapped the screen at a different location. “The earth’s crust is thinner here, allowing for maximum penetration with the Kovacs waves.”

  Zavala puffed his cheeks out. “That’s still a lot of ocean to cover. A couple of hundred square miles at least.”

  “It’s a start,” Austin said.

  He cocked his ear at the sound of an electrical hum coming from the cargo section. A moment later, Karla and Barrett came through the door. Karla’s golden hair was in straggles, and she had dark circles under her large eyes. Barrett’s hands and face were covered with grease.

  Austin thought that even in her disheveled state, Karla could put the most pampered fashion model to shame with her graceful beauty. She raised the screwdriver in her hand like the torch on the Statue of Liberty.

  “Ta-dum!” she said. “Time for trumpets and drumroll. We’re done.”

  “The dynamos are all on track and running,” Barrett said.

  Barrett had hauled the last cable in less than an hour before, and the plane was airborne within minutes of shutting the door. Al Hibbet had watched with a sad expression as the plane took off. He had wanted to join the mission, but Austin said they needed to leave someone with an intimate knowledge of the mission behind. Just in case.

  The humming increased in loudness. Karla acknowledged the congratulations that followed, then stretched out on some empty seats and promptly fell asleep. Austin removed the screwdriver from Karla’s fingers and tucked it on the seat beside her.

  “Thanks,” Barrett said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Following Karla’s example, he yawned and crawled onto the next row of sets where he, too, stretched out and immediately fell asleep.

  Austin made a note of the longitude and latitude at the position on his computer, then went up to the cockpit to give the plane’s navigator the coordinates. He asked how long before they would be on-site and was told it would be approximately two hours. Austin looked out the cockpit window at the layer of c
ottony clouds that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

  The crew was made up entirely of volunteers who were fully aware that they were flying on a dangerous mission. While the navigator laid out a flight plan, Austin and Zavala returned to the passenger cabin.

  “From what you said in the cockpit, we’ll arrive on target about the same time as the ship,” Zavala said.

  “It’s an even tighter squeeze. We’ll be in the same neighborhood. When we get there, we’ll have to launch a search pattern. I don’t know how long it will take to find the transmitter ship.”

  “Any delay could be fatal. That low cloud cover won’t help.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. The Trouts reported that they saw a lot of electrical activity in the sky minutes before their boat was sucked into the whirlpool.”

  “That’s right. And Al said there were celestial fireworks when the U.S. and the Soviets were fooling around with electromagnetic warfare based on the Kovacs Theorems.”

  “Then there’s every reason to think that we’ll see the same phenomenon when Margrave and Gant gear up their zapper. I think we should be looking at the sky rather than the sea. The clouds might actually help us find the ship.”

  “Brilliant! I’ll alert the crew to look for fireworks.”

  Austin reluctantly awakened Karla and Barrett. He gave them a few minutes to rub the sleep out of their eyes. As the plane sped toward the South Atlantic Anomaly, he brought them up to date on the situation. They agreed to split up when the time came, with Karla on one side of the plane, Barrett on the other. Austin would alternate back and forth and serve as liaison with Zavala, who would keep watch from the cockpit.

  Zavala’s voice came over the speakers. He said the plane would pass over the outer limits of the search area in fifteen minutes. Austin could feel the growing tension in the cabin. The atmosphere grew even tenser when Zavala announced that they were in the hot zone. They took up their positions at the aircraft’s windows. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Austin moved back and forth across the wide cabin, offering encouragement. It was hard to believe that a vast ocean lay below the thick layer of clouds.

  Austin had suggested that the plane fly a series of parallel runs back and forth across the search area. It was the same lawn mower pattern Austin would have used to search for a lost ship and would cover many square miles in a comparatively short time. They finished one run, then made another and were on their third when Austin began to wonder if he had made a mistake. He was checking his watch every few seconds.

  The plane had turned to make another run when Karla called out, “I see something. Around three o’clock.”

  Austin and Barrett scrambled across the cabin to the other side of the plane and peered through the windows. The sun was low in the sky and its slanting rays had created blue shadows in the cloud cover. But off to the right, the sky pulsated with a golden-white radiance that was similar to the glow a thunderstorm would produce in the clouds. Austin grabbed a microphone connected to the cockpit. Zavala replied over the speakers that he had seen the glow in the clouds as well.

  The plane banked into a turn and, like a moth attracted to a flame, began its long glide toward the light that bubbled in the distance like a giant witch’s cauldron.

  42

  WITH TIME SHORT, it had been necessary to opt for simplicity in setting up the control panel in the spacious cargo section. The console was a flat board that rested on supports raising it to waist level. The layout was deliberately uncomplicated, consisting of a main switch that controlled the flow of power to all the dynamos. Various dials and gauges kept tabs on different parts of the operating system.

  Zavala’s voice came over the speakers. “We’re going into the clouds.”

  Austin felt a prickling on his scalp and his hair stood on end, not because of fear, but from the sudden electrical charge that saturated the air. Karla’s long blond tresses were standing on end like the hair on the Bride of Frankenstein. She reached up and patted her hair down, with limited success. With his shaved scalp, Barrett had no such problem, although the spider tattoo had goose bumps.

  The electrical show was only beginning. Every surface of the cargo section began to glow an electrical blue like the Saint Elmo’s fire that sailors used to see dancing in the rigging of their sailing ships. The plane’s interior lights blinked on and off, as if a child were playing with the switch. Then the lights went out completely.

  Stroboscopic flashes from outside lit up the rows of windows and illuminated the bewildered faces in the cargo section like dancers in a disco. The plane seemed to be in the midst of a lightning storm. But there was no thunder, only the muted roar of the jet engines. The relative silence heightened the eeriness of the scene.

  The intercom must have operated on a separate system, because Zavala’s voice crackled over the speakers. His message was brief and to the point:

  “We’ve lost the cockpit instruments.”

  A second later, he relayed a message that was even more terrifying. “Oh hell, the controls are gone too.”

  Austin knew that a plane the size of a 747 wouldn’t go into an instantaneous dive, but it wasn’t built to soar on the updrafts like a glider. Once the aircraft discovered it was on its own, it would lapse into a tumble that would rip its wings off. He put his arm protectively around Karla’s shoulders.

  Something was happening in the cargo area. The electrical display seemed less brilliant. The cold fire playing along the walls and ceiling seemed to be dying down. Dark spots appeared in the shimmer and dampened the ghostly blue light. There was one last, brilliant burp of radiance. The interior lights blinked on.

  A second later, Zavala’s voice came over the speaker with a welcome announcement:

  “The instruments and controls are back on,” he reported.

  Austin removed his arm from around Karla’s shoulders and went over to check the control panel. He was worried that the surge of static electricity that had put on such a dramatic light display might have burned out the switches. To his relief, everything was in order.

  Karla had noticed a change in the light coming through the window and went to investigate. She pressed her nose against the Plexiglas and called the others over. Austin peered out a window and saw that they were through the overcast. Blue ocean was visible through the vaporous tatters of low-lying clouds. A flickering brilliance from above caught his eye. Instead of the underside of the cloud cover, he saw an aurora of swirling whites, blues and purple that formed a luminous canopy. The very heavens seemed on fire; it was as if a hundred lightning storms were discharging simultaneous bolts.

  The plane had made it through the electrical barrier in one piece, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. Although the electrical assault was fading, the farther they dropped below the clouds, the plane was being buffeted by gut-wrenching turbulence. Power-packed winds slammed into the 747 from every direction. Despite its massive size, the plane pitched and yawed like a kite on a string.

  The buffeting was only a softening up. The plane was slammed like a boxer on the ropes by a series of head-on wind gusts. The cargo space reverberated with loud bangs as the winds hammered the plane as if it were rolling along a road full of deep potholes. Just as it seemed that another pounding would pop every rivet in the plane, the blows became less violent and less frequent. Then they stopped completely.

  “Are you all right back there?” Zavala said.

  “We’re fine, but you need a new set of shock absorbers.”

  “I need a new set of teeth,” Zavala said.

  “Tell the pilot that was a nice save. Are the wings still attached?”

  “He says thanks, and who needs wings anyhow?”

  “That’s reassuring. Can you see the ship?”

  “Not yet. Still a few clouds.” There was a pause, and when Zavala’s voice came back on Austin could hear the excitement in it. “Look to the port side, Kurt. Around nine o’clock.”

  Austin looked out the window and s
aw the liner below. The ship looked like a toy boat in the ocean. There was no wake, which confirmed what Austin already knew from the turbulence and light show the plane had encountered. The ship was stationary, and the electromagnetic assault had begun.

  The ship was surrounded by a ring of waves that were moving away from the vessel in an expanding circle. Although it was hard to judge the size of the waves, the fact that their foamy crests were so clearly visible at the altitude the plane was flying meant that the seas were monstrous.

  Austin got on the intercom and asked the pilot to level out at ten thousand feet and to circle the ship, dropping one thousand feet with each circuit. He turned to Barrett, who was standing at the control panel, and told him to get ready. The scientist nodded and began to increase the power to the dynamos. An electrical hum like a thousand bee hives filled the plane’s interior.

  Something was burning. Austin looked down the length of the cargo space and saw a cloud of purple smoke and sparks coming from one of the dynamos. He yelled at Barrett to kill the power, and, with Karla right behind him, he dashed down the long length of the plane.

  Barrett had seen the gauge signifying a problem and had already hit the kill switch. Austin found the source of the sparks was a lead into one of the dynamos. The connection had come loose while the plane was being bounced around by the violent turbulence.

  He examined the connection for damage, found nothing serious and quickly reconnected the cable. Austin yelled at Barrett to power up. The humming of the bees began, and rose to a pitch where it drowned out the roar of the jet engines. Karla had joined Barrett at the control panel. Austin stood near the intercom where he could keep in close touch with the cockpit.

  “How does it look?” Austin asked.

  Barrett’s eyes swept over the control panel and he smiled. “Everything is on track.”